


Safeguard

by JazzRaft



Series: The Pious and the Profane [2]
Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Canon-Typical Violence, Comfort/Angst, M/M, Oracle!Noctis, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-06
Updated: 2017-04-09
Packaged: 2018-09-22 13:02:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9608639
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JazzRaft/pseuds/JazzRaft
Summary: The Oracle confides in his closest knight all of the secrets of his heart that go against everything he's been raised to fulfill.(A collection of oneshots set in the Oracle!Noct universe.)





	1. Safeguard

**Author's Note:**

  * For [CkyKing](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CkyKing/gifts).



> Originally posted on [tumblr](http://jazzraft.tumblr.com/post/156184638832/1st-of-all-i-would-like-to-thank-you-for-the) for [ckyking.](http://ckyking.tumblr.com/)
> 
> Happy to start sharing the pieces of this AU to AO3! It's been a popular request over on tumblr since its inception! :D

Altissia was like a boiling pot. Its people crashed at the gates of the Grand Palace like the waves of the ocean feeding into the city, gawking up at the distant towers, searching for a shadow that might be the Oracle pacing one of its myriad rooms. Less reverent persistence was inclined towards his entourage, the guards and assistants whom were sworn to keep him safe.

Nyx had taken to leaving his uniform at the Palace, patrolling the streets instead dressed as one of the locals. It was amazing how quickly his face went forgotten when the gilded suit wasn’t beneath it. He could slip through the mobs with relative ease when he looked just like another Altissian. Not that there was anything worth reporting on out in the city. For all their excitement and all of the tension surrounding the upcoming awakening, Altissia was quiet.

There was nothing for him to tell Noctis when he sought his audience. If Nyx was being honest with himself, reporting on these uneventful trips was just an excuse to be invited into the Oracle’s chambers. To see for himself if his charge was safe… and just to see him.

But not like this.

When Nyx stepped into the room, he froze for a moment, panic shooting through him like a bullet because _Noctis wasn’t there_. A thousand horrible scenarios rampaged through his skull in a split second, most of them leaning perilously close to the assumption that the Nifs had done something, had stolen Noctis out from under him for Gods knew what reason.

A few swift, furious steps into the room dumped cold water on that idea. He found Noctis on the balcony, just outside the bedroom, silent as the nighttime in the evening glow. His back was to Nyx, arms folded against the balustrade, head cradled in the curl of them upon the white marble. Relief washed through Nyx like a cleansing rain, cleaning away the panic and the fear… but not the dread.

Noctis was still and quiet, as motionless as a corpse draped across the balcony. For a second, all of Nyx’s fear welled back up and he imagined touching Noctis’s shoulder, turning him over, and finding a dagger sunk into his throat.

“Lord Noctis?” he barely dared to ask, terrified that he wouldn’t be given an answer.

It wasn’t exactly an answer, but it was a sound, and that was all Nyx had really hoped for. A small grunt of acknowledgement, barely audible beneath his arms, whimpered back to Nyx. While it assured the guardsmen that the Oracle was alive, the pitiful noise brought up a slew of different worries inside of him.

“Is everything alright… My Lord?” he asked, almost forgetting to add the title.

Noctis shifted slightly, pulling his arms a little tighter around his face. Hiding, Nyx realized. If he couldn’t see the world, maybe the world couldn’t see him back. Nyx’s chest tightened, torn. He’d been in the Oracle’s employ for years now, but that was all he was. An employee. An employee with an above average repertoire with his employer, but an employee nevertheless. It was beyond his boundaries to ask after the personal state of the Oracle. His job was strictly kept to ensuring that he was physically safe.

Whether he kept to the rules or not, after a long, silent moment, Noctis’s voice quivered up from his self-made hiding place. It was hardly a whisper, as timid and tiny as a child’s, sending weak tremors throughout his frail body.

“Can I tell you a secret, Nyx?”

“Of course, My Lord.”

Noctis lifted his head. His eyes were red and swollen, tears emptied along his cheeks, smeared across his jaw and over his lips from where he’d tried to wipe them away, only to have them be replaced by a never-ending cascade of more. He’d been crying for hours. His voice was hoarse and words tremulous, said as if they were a sin, full of fear and want, and he looked to Nyx as if he could absolve him of it.

“I don’t want to die.”

An awful chill trickled through Nyx’s blood. His throat closed and his fingers twitched from where they were folded behind his back. He froze, staring at Noctis, the faultless façade of the Oracle crumpled beneath his tears.

“But I can’t stop,” he went on, his whole body shaking with the effort it took to speak. “If I stop, I doom the whole world to darkness. If I don’t, I doom myself to death. I thought I had accepted it, but lately… I’ve found myself feeling so selfish… I just…”

His face contorted into a sob, dry and absent of tears because he had none left to shed. The sobbing turned into coughing, racking violently at his slim frame. He collapsed heavily against the balcony railing, hand covering his mouth. Nyx hurried to his side, arms reaching out to support him. The black taint of the Starscourge stained Noctis’s fingers. The sight of it made him whine in distress, afraid of his own body, afraid of the whole world so, he hid again. This time clutching Nyx’s shirt and turning his face into his chest.

Nyx felt hollow. Like a great force had reached inside of him and siphoned everything out, save for a vague ache, an unnamed despair that permeated throughout the shell of himself. Nyx wasn’t a religious man. He’d never prayed to the Six. The only times he’d ever invoked any of their names was when he was swearing. Not even following Noctis to awaken Titan had instilled the expected awe in him that the Six were meant to inspire.

And now, here, with the gods’ sacrificial lamb shuddering in his arms, lungs black with the Scourge and life forfeit to a mistake that man had never made, but was made to fix anyway… All Nyx felt was hate.

“You’re not gonna die, okay?” he heard himself say, knowing that it was a lie; that there wasn’t a damn thing a lowly guard, unchosen and unimportant, could do to change destiny. “It’s just Leviathan and that’s it. You’re gonna awaken her, she’s gonna give her power to Luna, and it’ll be over. The Princess will do the rest, alright? You’ve done enough.”

The sound of Noctis’s laugh was horrible and broken. A husk. Lightless. The gods did that to him. Made him into the people’s hope, but left no hope for himself to take. And Nyx hated them for that.

“That’s not how it works…”

“How _does_ it work, then?” Nyx snapped, arms reflexively tightening around the Oracle. “Who says you have to die, huh? Why the _hell_ do they get to decide which lives are worth living and which ones aren’t, when they’re the ones who fucked us all up in the first place?”

“Stop.”

He didn’t say it because he didn’t agree with Nyx. He said it because he _had_ to. Everything _had_ to be done. The Covenant _had_ to be made, the Oracle _had_ to take the Starscourge into himself, the Queen of Light _had_ to save the world from darkness. None of them were ever given a choice. And Nyx would never understand why, still, the people prayed to the Six. As if these monsters were their saviors and not their captors.

Noctis’s face curled up from his chest, eyes tired and so full of hurt. Nyx didn’t know how to relieve it, how to save him. But Noctis asked him to anyway, tear-stained fingers brushing as delicately as sylleblossoms across the strong cut of his jaw. And his lips were just as soft as those Tenebraen petals when they touched Nyx’s. Tentative, chaste, and yielding to the gentle press of Nyx’s lips as he kissed him back.

“Noct…” he whispered, warning himself more than anyone that he shouldn’t, _couldn’t_ do this. Couldn’t disrespect the intended Queen whom his prince was promised to by taking what wasn’t his.

“Please, I… I won’t ask anything else of you, just… Stay with me? Please? I’m so… _tired_ of being alone.”

Noctis leaned his forehead against Nyx’s chin, rubbing against the rough shadow of stubble there before lowering his face back against his chest. Nyx gulped down hard on the clotted knot of hopelessness inside of him. He rested his head atop Noctis’s, encircling him in his arms and folding him close. It wasn’t enough to quell the trembling, but it was enough for him to hide against him, and enough for him to fill the empty space surrounding him with another.

“You’re not alone, you got that?” Nyx murmured into his hair. “I’ve got you. Always. And there’s not a damn thing in this world that’s gonna change that.”

He cast his glare out to the waters of Altissia. A silent curse at Leviathan, submerged somewhere beneath the lucid pools, and all the rest of her accursed saints. _I’ll save him from you,_ he promised the gods. _Just try and stop me_.


	2. flickers from the past

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How Nyx became the Oracle's knight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted on [tumblr](http://jazzraft.tumblr.com/post/157007216217/hello-i-am-going-through-your-nyxnoct-fics-and) for an anonymous request.

He had resolved himself to death.

He’d watched the scourge gnaw away at his mother and his sister until they were barely bones left to attract flies in the medical tents outside of town. Both of them were stronger than him, and even they couldn’t fight the Astrals’ plague. What chance could he possibly have?

He had resolved himself to death and contented himself with the idea of it. As the days passed by, listening to the empty creaks of the ramshackle house, he was beginning to long for it. Even thought, once or twice, that maybe he shouldn’t wait for the scourge to take him. Maybe he should just kill himself as a final spite towards the disease.

_You took my family, but you won’t take me._

And he’d be reunited with them, either way. It would be better than this. The afterlife. There, it wouldn’t be so lonely. There would be his mother and his sister… and maybe he’d even find his father with them. It would be better than the silence. It would be better than waking to the piercing cough and watching black stains form on the sheets in the dark at three in the morning. It would be better than staggering out his door and seeing another one of his neighbors being carted from their home in a body bag. It would be better than stealing a bottle from behind the local bar at age thirteen to take to his mother’s grave and make himself sick with until the sun faded for the moon.

Death would be better than Galahd, if the town wasn’t purgatory already. Most days he had his doubts. Maybe he already was dead. Maybe he’d sinned too much in the short time he’d lived on Eos, and this was where he’d ended up. His family was forever barred from him by the transit of his own mortal trespasses. He was condemned to wander this putrid town, choking on his own lungs, visiting the same graves, and praying for the same fate.

Every day.

Every night.

For all of a time.

…Until his angel saved him.

It was on the day he was going to die. He woke up and he couldn’t move. Whether by a fault in his anatomy or just a failure of his will, he woke up and he just laid there. Watching the dust motes dance lazily in the slants of light from his window. He wasn’t coughing yet. A short reprieve for when it would inevitably start up and never stop until he was dead. He could feel it coming. He allowed himself a single tear of regret while he waited.

Regret that he hadn’t stolen that gun from beneath the bar instead of the whiskey.

There was a lot of talking going on in Galahd all morning. He could hear the townspeople murmuring all around him; bustling, he’d even go so far as to say, if he didn’t know they were all too weak for that kind of energy. Sometimes he thought he heard tears, other times he thought he heard cheers – those times he was sure were calls from the beyond, warning him that his time was drawing nearer. Sound grew stranger and stranger to him as the day passed by.

Even the clumsy knock on his door sounded garbled and faraway. He could barely recognize his friend’s voice as he called to him from the other side. Even when he let himself in – there was no point in locking a dead boy’s door – and wobbled to his side, he wasn’t sure it was really Libertus that he was looking at.

“Nyx, come on! Get up! We’re saved, we’re finally saved, get up, he came!”

He couldn’t feel Libertus’s hands as he tugged on his arm. His whole body had gone numb. It had already died. Now, the scourge was just teasing death in front of his soul, the last scrap left of him, trapped inside a corpse. Libertus yanked desperately at him, blubbering with half-shed tears and pleading with him to hold on.

Nyx didn’t notice how unfamiliar the ardency was to his efforts. That the energy behind them was entirely fresh, healthy, _unscourged._ Nyx didn’t notice the crowd of Galahdians, _smiling_ , outside the crack in his door as it opened to allow entry again. He didn’t notice anything.

But he noticed his angel. A white-robed harbinger from the gods, passing from behind Libertus to beckon Nyx to the next world. A thin, raven-haired boy, a few years younger than himself, with a shy smile and eyes so blue that he must have been a spirit from another world. They shone with the brilliance of every star in the night sky, unreal in the dank rot of Nyx’s shack. He felt his spirit reaching out to the boy because his body could not, welcoming his invitation to death. If the gods had offered him this vision of tranquility, then maybe he wouldn’t feel how badly it was going to hurt.

The blue-eyed seraph pressed gently at Libertus’s shoulder and he relinquished Nyx’s hand to his touch. It looked wrong, the mottled black skin of his hand resting limp in the pure, unblemished palms. The boy touched Nyx’s face and he knew that he must be close to the end if he could feel him when he’d felt nothing else.

“Hi,” the boy said, so quiet that only Nyx could hear him. “I’m Noctis. I’m here to help.”

A soft light slowly illuminated his hands, golden and warm. Noctis leaned his face against his, so close they could have kissed, and Nyx wondered if that wasn’t what this was. A kiss of death. A gentle farewell from one life to the next. As the golden light spread, filling Nyx’s gaze and pouring past his skin, he suddenly knew that this wasn’t death. The scourge was cruel and so were the gods, for they were the ones that put it upon them. Neither would be so merciful as to award him this vision to ease his passing.

There were no angels in the Astral Realm.

“Blessed stars of life and light, deliver us from darkness blight,” Noctis murmured, eyes closed in quiet concentration.

The light eased through him and he could _feel_ again. He felt its careful caress beneath his skin, silently purging away all of his hurts. The world grew brighter the more darkness was erased. His breaths came easier, he could hear them, steady and full from the wet rasps they once were. He could see the tears on his best friend’s face, could see that the ugly stains on his cheeks were gone, could see that he was standing without a stoop, that he was healed, and he was alive.

While the battle with the scourge had lasted for a lifetime, it only took a moment for the light to take the victory. Noctis drew away and Nyx followed him like a magnet. His knees swung from beneath the sheets and didn’t seize from beneath him when he stood. His spine didn’t scream as he straightened and his skull didn’t lurch. He flexed his hands, turned them over and over again, searching for the scourge’s black bruises and finding none. He breathed in the dust and the musk of his horrible little home, and he’d never felt more alive.

“It’s a miracle!” Libertus cried as he bowled a hug into him, sobbing in relief.

The power behind the little boy’s embrace was so full of vitality, a strength none of them in Galahd had ever experienced before. It was bracing. It was passionate. It was full of _life_. Galahd had gone too long without living.

Nyx found Noctis’s eyes again, shimmering from gold to blue as the power faded. He suddenly remembered the boy from when the TV had once worked. The Oracle of Tenebrae, Communer of the Gods, and Healer of the People. Nyx had watched him behind the glass of the TV screen with nothing but scorn, assuming him a false prophet that the news was desperate to raise to sainthood. The boy he’d resented had been his savior.

“Thank you,” Libertus bubbled, running his arm through the snot and tears on his cheeks. “Thank you so much, Lord Noctis.”

The boy smiled, a light pinkness touching his cheeks before he bowed his head and turned back out into the street. Nyx’s renewed legs moved without him even needing to think it. When he exited into the day, the sun felt so much brighter, so much hotter than it’d ever been before. He raised his hand against the blinding light, awed by it, and when his eyes adjusted his neighbors were all gasping in relief and scurrying towards him.

“Lord Noctis!” he called out before he was pulled into the reverent throng. The boy turned back and Nyx kneeled in the dust before him, shock plain on the Oracle’s face as he did. “How else can I repay you for my life than by swearing it to your own? Please allow me the honor to follow and to serve you, wherever you may go so, that I do not waste the life you’ve restored to me.”

Galahd had been death. He could see it on most of his fellow townsfolks’ faces that few of them planned to remain in the town that only brought them despair. The world waited for those without the scourge to spread. They were free. All that was left for Nyx here were ghosts, his family’s as well as his own. The ghost of the stricken boy vomiting in the graveyard and surviving only to die. He couldn’t protect his mother after all that she gave him life.

But if he would let him, Nyx would protect Noctis for all that he returned his life to him.

Noctis glanced hesitantly at the sole guardian he’d brought with him, a stone-faced man with brown hair and closed eyes. He inclined his head towards the young Oracle, and interpreting that as permission, Noctis turned his gaze back onto Nyx.

“If I said you didn’t owe me anything, you’d probably tell me I’m wrong, right?”

There was a lilt to his voice, a little tease towards the severity of Nyx’s vow. For the first time in a very long time spent in the dark, it made Nyx smile.

“That I would, My Lord.”


	3. Awakening

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted on [tumblr](http://jazzraft.tumblr.com/post/157303440127/hello-i-am-a-huge-fan-of-your-writing-you-are-so) for an anonymous request.

The salty tang of the water pressed against the top of his mouth, overwhelming the desperate drag of air he tried to pull into his lungs before another blast of the waves rushed over his head. He went wheeling into the current, smashing his mouth shut and trying to decide which way was up and which way was down while he was buffeted through the blue-green tide. When he fell out into less turbulent waters, his arms pumped furiously towards the golden pool of sunlight he found above.

His eyes were burning when he found air again, blurred to the monstrous power swirling all around him. He made out the shape of a solid surface and didn’t stop swimming until he felt broken marble beneath him. Nyx coughed out buckets of salt water and squeezed his eyes in tight blinks to banish the sting of it from his eyes. When he could see again, he could assess where he’d washed up… but everything was so broken and submerged in the swirling might of Leviathan’s wrath that the district was impossible to recognize.

The Goddess screamed furiously at the Queen of Light’s assault, Her Majesty only a crystalline streak whirling about the serpent’s head. Airships skirted the edges of the typhoon, and Nyx hoped one of them was Aranea’s. The second he found Noctis, he wanted to put Altissia in the rearview as quickly as the Commodore could ram the gas pedal.

Heavy with water and throbbing with the bruises from carving his way through a hundred MTs before the waves engulfed the plaza, Nyx pressed on. He climbed the slippery slant of the marble and picked through the rubble until he could find a view of Leviathan’s battleground. A crumble of drowned buildings fell between him and the Oracle’s altar. It took Nyx far too long for his patience to trek across them, constantly jerking his head to Leviathan as she thrashed and sent surges of water up to his knees that threatened to drag him back out again.

Nyx persisted, cursing at every tug of the water around his clothes, but was finally rewarded when he clambered up to the high pillar where Leviathan had been called. The scream in his legs was eclipsed by the scream of panic in his voice.

“Noctis!”

The Oracle lay still upon the stone, his ivory robes in shreds and his arms stretched towards the trident fallen just beyond his reach. Nyx slid to his knees to pull him into his lap, relieved to find his eyes half open and blinking up at him. Noctis gave him a weak smile.

“Hey,” he said, voice as tremulous as the drops of sea-water in his hair. “I knew you’d come. A little late to the party though, don’t you think?”

Nyx laughed with relief. Not even the crash of Luna, hurtling into a building nearby, could distract him from how comforting it was to have the Oracle in his arms again. The rip of concrete and distant roar of spite from the Queen as she threw herself back into the battle made Noctis wince. As if her blows upon Leviathan were blows struck against himself.

“It’s all wrong, Nyx,” he said, gulping around a despaired knot in his throat. “I don’t know what I did wrong… She’s not making Covenants. She’s killing them. Everything’s wrong, I don’t… I don’t know…”

“We’ll figure it out, okay? Just take it easy. We need to get out of here first.”

Nyx shifted to pick him up, but Noctis stayed a hand against his arm. And that’s when Nyx noticed the scourge. It was seeping from beneath his skin, purpling his hands and crawling up his arms beneath the ribbons of his sleeves. There was a sickly dark stain within the whites of his eyes that made Nyx’s blood chill. He could feel his face falling, and Noctis saw it before he could push it beneath the stoic mask of the Oracle’s guard.

“It’s okay,” Noctis rasped. “I’m not afraid. I’m just… sad that I couldn’t have this for a little bit longer.”

His hand shook as he raised it to Nyx’s face, as frail as falling snow and just as light upon his skin. Nyx could see his eyes losing focus, flitting back and forth as if he couldn’t keep track of where his knight was. Nyx gripped his hand tight.

“We’ve had this conversation, remember?” he said, resolute. “You’re not gonna die. Especially not now. We’re going to need you more than ever, Noct.”

Leviathan screamed, making the whole city shake, as Luna’s Armiger pummeled into Her. Noctis was right. Something was wrong. There was a violence to the Queen’s attacks; a lethality to the way she aimed her blades. She wasn’t taming the beast to submit to her will. And if the reports from Duscae were true, if Titan was truly dead, then the intent behind Luna’s blows became that much more sinister.

A spasm of pain bolted through Noctis, making him cough up the scourge to stain his lips black. Nyx’s stomach dropped. A fuzzy darkness blotted at the corners of his vision, like the half-cognizant feeling he got just before falling unconscious. It made his whole body go hollow, made his sight narrow onto a singular purpose; of staying on his feet. Of not falling. He wasn’t going to let Noctis fall.

“Come on, Noct! You’ve got to hang in there! You’ve made it this far. Are you really going to let this thing kill you now?”

Nyx moved to try and pull Noctis into his arms and carry him away from all this. Carry him to some open space where Aranea was going to find them because that’s what she did. She always found them. Even if she didn’t know where to look. He would carry him to Ignis, and Gladiolus, and Prompto, and between all of them, they would figure out a way to save him. Because that’s what they did. They defied the odds. Defied everything that would ever dare harm the Oracle.

But Noctis clutched the gilded fabric of his coat, the bruises of the scourge stark and horrifying against it. Like it was mocking Nyx. Like it was reminding him that he could protect him from the whole world all he damn well liked. But he could never protect him from this curse. He could never protect Noctis from himself. From his desire to help people. From his duty.

“Tell everyone… that I cherished every moment…”

Every word came with agony, Noctis’s face twisting with each halting syllable. He searched for Nyx’s face in the darkness cloaking his eyes, but he was losing it. Nyx clutched him to his chest, desperately trying to hold him to the light.

“This isn’t happening. Damnit, Noct…”

“I know it’s cruel of me to say,” he said, voice growing fainter and further away. “But… I’m glad you came.”

Not soon enough. Not fast enough. Not _good_ enough. They should have never come to Altissia. They should have paid attention. They should have known it wasn’t the Empire that killed Titan. They should have known it wasn’t worth going on to awaken Leviathan. They should have known it wasn’t worth Noctis killing himself to awaken gods, only for them to be slaughtered.

But he hadn’t seen it. He’d been looking at Noct when he should have been looking everywhere else. He’d been looking at his smile when Gladio cracked a racy joke over drinks at the hunter outposts. He’d been looking at the way his body moved when Aranea drilled him on how to use that trident to kill instead of just swing around for show. He’d been looking at the subdued passion with which he approached every victim of the scourge. He’d been looking at the way his tears fell when he confessed that all he wanted was to live. All he wanted was to save the world, but he wanted to be saved with it. And all Nyx had wanted was to be the one to do it.

“Please, Noct, come _on_!” Nyx bellowed at the scourge inside of him before his rage simpered out into a broken plea. “All I wanted was to save you.”

Noctis stared past him and smiled, words on his tongue that he couldn’t find the strength to get out before his fingers lost their grip and his arm fell to his side. Something snapped in Nyx then and his body moved all at once. He hooked his arm beneath Noctis’s knees and drew the other under his shoulders, lifting him up and searching the skies for the familiar crimson flash of Aranea’s airship. When he couldn’t find her, he turned to find another way out.

And that’s when he saw him. A man in the shadows of the broken lanes of Altissia. Spinning a dagger between his fingers and watching him. The yellow of his eyes beneath the rim of his hat, struck Nyx to a halt. An inexplicable dread spread through him at the sight of the stranger, something cold and without a name and that he didn’t have the time to figure out.

“Who the fuck are you?” he snapped, angry that he was in his way more than he was afraid of the dark feeling his appearance elicited.

The dagger continued to spin between his fingers, as if he couldn’t seem to decide what to do with it. His eyes lingered on Noctis in Nyx’s arms, a predatory curiosity to the golden glint. Nyx shifted to turn Noctis from his line of a sight. Which made the stranger smirk in amusement.

“A man of no consequence,” he finally answered. “As I told our fallen Queen. An unexpected turn of events, that.”

He nodded at the failing struggle of Leviathan beyond, Her roars growing weaker and waves crashing heavier the more strength Luna beat from her. It was all so far away from Nyx though. His mind had locked itself into a single, frantic purpose. A purpose this man was dividing him from.

“You can either get out of my way, or drown with Leviathan for all I care.”

“Are you quite certain those are the only options you wish to afford me? Because I believe there’s a third that may be of great value to you.”

The dagger vanished up his sleeve and he strolled from the shadows. Nyx instinctively recoiled, turning his shoulder to the stranger in an effort to put as much of himself between him and Noctis as he could.

“You want your Oracle to live, don’t you?” the stranger asked, a hand extending towards the prone body in Nyx’s arms. “I can help with that.”

Nyx eyed the inviting wiggle of his fingers, every instinct in his body telling him to take Noctis and run the other way, even if the other way was only water and destruction. Everything screamed at him not to stay where he was. Not to trust whatever this man was offering. But desperation overtook his instincts. Senseless, illogical _longing_ for Noctis to live made Nyx stupid. Just for this one moment.

“How?” he asked, his own voice sounding like someone else’s.

“The more questions you ask, the less salvageable he becomes.”

One last wail of protest from deep inside his bones, and Nyx nodded.

The stranger didn’t need to move another step closer. Instead, long, winding shadows unfurled from beneath his sleeves, inky fingers that reached for Noctis and coiled around the dark patches of skin where the scourge gnawed the most ravenously.

The shadows were so reminiscent of the scourge themselves that Nyx almost jerked back and rescinded his consent. But then he saw that beneath the writhing black substance, the marks of scourge were slowly beginning to recede, pulling up into the shadows like it was a magnet for it. Eventually, the marks vanished completely, and a tiny sound caught in Noctis’s throat. His face turned slightly into Nyx’s chest, his eyes closed, but his breaths coming a little easier.

“That’ll do for the time being,” the stranger said, already turning in a rustle of fabric to sway back to the darkness. “I’ll take my payment in the form of you doing something about our Queen’s tantrum. It’s quite the nuisance.”

Nyx didn’t have time to follow him, or to call out with a hundred questions as to what he’d done or how he’d done it. The engine of Aranea’s airship hummed above him, the sound as close to home as Nyx had ever felt. Leviathan crashed beneath the waves and the Light of Lucis submerged herself further into the Darkness.

But the Oracle lived. At what cost, Nyx didn’t care enough to know. All he did know was that if they had Noctis, they still had hope. If he had Noctis, he could still fight for the light. No matter how deeply it cast the shadows.


	4. Aftermath

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted on [tumblr](http://jazzraft.tumblr.com/post/158494847077/your-oracle-au-is-so-good-im-completely-entranced) for an anonymous request.

Aranea kicked him awake. For once, he didn’t want to kill her for it. Mostly because he hadn’t wanted to fall asleep in the first place.

He blinked up at her bleary silhouette until she came into focus, and was confounded to find a cup of coffee presented to him when she did. Aranea _never_ brought him coffee. _He_ was the coffee-run guy. He knew everybody’s order like a verse from the Cosmogony. Cappuccino with extra sugar for Noct, and black for Aranea with a pinch of crushed Leiden pepper. Mocha for Nyx. Which he was, quite frankly, _floored_ to find she had correctly ordered for him now.

“I get the feeling it’s gonna be a long day,” she told him as he gratefully lapped at the hot drink. “Might want to make that a double.”

“What gives you that feeling?”

Aranea shrugged, crossing her arms and pacing to the nearest porthole. Nyx’s back blasted obscenities at him for falling asleep like he did, sitting on the floor and leaning against the medical bed. Different obscenities spilled past his lips when he turned his head and found that Noctis was _not_ in said bed. Therein lied the answer to Aranea’s “feeling.”

“Cockpit,” she said before Nyx could ask.

He burned his tongue on the long draws of coffee as he marched through the airship. That spiteful, selfless son of a bitch needed to be _resting_ , not walking around probably whittling away all his strength on healing papercuts (Nyx wouldn’t put it past him; the kid had no restraint when it came to helping people.)

As the cockpit doors hissed open and Nyx set his eyes on Noctis, the fever in his veins slowly began to cool. He was fine. Curled up in the co-pilot’s seat as the airship cruised on auto-pilot. Staring ahead at the clouds. His arms were hugged around his waist, fingers turning idly beneath the hem of his shirt. Nyx caught the outline of a sylleblossom from the tattoo on his back nursed beneath his fingers. Nyx could feel a subdued turmoil humming through the matching flower inked on his own wrist, connecting him to the Oracle’s power and the feelings that bled through it. His gaze was far away, further even than the endless expanse of sky beyond.

“You look a little dazed, Noct,” Nyx said with a breathy laugh. “Don’t think it was the right idea to check yourself out of the medical wing just yet.”

Noctis glanced up at him and fluttered a weak smile that only took up half his face. Nyx perched upon the arm of the pilot’s seat next to him. Fingers folding together between his spread knees. Noctis dropped his gaze to the controls, his thoughts too distracted to maintain a gaze. Nyx spent the moment memorizing the profile of his face, grateful that he could still admire the fine details and trying to forget the scourge that had marred them only a day ago.

Noctis couldn’t forget the disease that continued to course through him though. He frowned down at all the switches lined up on the dashboard.

“How am I alive?”

Nyx was troubled to hear that it wasn’t relief which colored his voice. A strange doubt stained each word. Like talking past the final punctuation mark on the page of a pre-written script. The speech was supposed to be ended, yet questions were still asked afterward. The answers were less certain without lines to read from.

“Don’t know,” Nyx half-lied – he truly didn’t understand the mechanics of the stranger’s darkness which had siphoned the scourge from across the Oracle’s skin. “And honestly? Don’t even care. I’m just glad that you’re alive.”

Noctis turned his head away from Nyx, lip catching beneath his teeth. A nervous tic that had always mesmerized Nyx. Inspired fantasies about what he wanted to whisper into Noct’s ear to fluster him enough to quiver in his arms, cast that doe-eyed stare up at him from beneath dark lashes, and tuck his flushed lips beneath a shy smile just like _that_. Nyx almost wished that he could lose himself in that fantasy. Or make it a reality. Do anything that would ease the pain of seeing and feeling Noctis so shattered inside.

“Dying was how it was supposed to go,” Noctis murmured. “The Oracle dying for the Chosen Queen ensures her Ascension. Yet, I’m still here… So, I must have failed.”

His voice caught and he brought a hand to his mouth, pressing back a horrified gasp as he recalled the violent flashes of Luna’s collapse into the Darkness. Nyx could feel fear and grief stinging through the sylleblossom at his wrist. Fear for what the Oracle’s failure would mean for the future of Eos. Grief for the girl he’d met so long ago in Tenebrae, as the twisted creature in Altissia killed her with the Hydraen. And there was an awful _guilt_ permeated throughout it all that Nyx couldn’t fathom until Noctis voiced it.

“Did I speak this into being?” he whispered, voice hollow. “When I told you I didn’t want to die?”

Nyx’s heart ached for him. Wanted to leap from his chest and pull Noctis deep inside. Enfold him in the heat of a love that had been burning to hold him for years. He wanted to enact another fantasy: to take him away from all of this. To pretend that he could hijack this airship and fly them off to nowhere. As if there were a place on Eos where the Empire couldn’t reach, and all the trials that came with its spread couldn’t touch Noctis.

As if such a place could exist in this cruel world.

He wished that he’d kissed him longer and harder in the few, confused moments in the days leading up to Leviathan’s awakening. He wished that he could kiss him now, and convince him with the fervency of his lips that none of it was his fault. That he deserved to live. And that Nyx loved him so much that the fate of the world fell away every time he looked into those sorrowful, summer sky eyes. He wondered if Noctis could feel the intensity of his love through the blood-ink of their tattoos.

“Noct,” Nyx said, instead dragging fact over his feelings like soil into a grave. “Luna was corrupted long before she came to Altissia. She drove onto this road all by herself, you know that. There was nothing you could have done.”

“I should have _seen_. I should have felt that something was wrong… I… I don’t know what to do Nyx…”

Noctis turned his head towards Nyx, but couldn’t look at him. His eyes were cast down to the cockpit floor, shamed by his failures. As if he couldn’t bear for his Knight to look at him. It curdled Nyx’s stomach. He folded down next to Noctis’s seat, taking a trembling hand in both of his, turning his fingers into his, stiff with barely concealed panic. Nyx could feel the anxiety thundering through his pulse, felt it in the clamming of his skin and the shake of his bones underneath.

“Noct, please don’t do this to yourself. You couldn’t have known. No one could have known. It’s not your fault, I promise that it’s not.”

“You make an awful lot of promises Nyx Ulric.”

Noctis gave him a shaky smile, struggling to put on a brave face for him. He’d always been amused by the promises Nyx made to him. Sacrilegious vows to spurn the gods and save Noctis from his fate. Oaths to walk by his side through fire and ice and the occasional malboro-infested swamp if it meant helping people in need. And, of course, the promises that Nyx never said, but suspected Noctis could hear anyway.

“And I’ve kept every one, haven’t I?” Nyx said, the corner of his lips quirking up into a smile. “This one’s no different.”

Noctis looked at him for a very long time, searching his face and desperately trying to believe that his words were the words of the gods themselves. That all of the answers to fate or destiny or whatever it was that governed the lives of them all, were hidden deep behind Nyx’s eyes. Nyx’s hand moved to cup his face as if pulled by a tether, fingers lightly following the swath of hair along his face.

“I’m glad you’re alive,” he said, softer this time.

Noctis tentatively curled his fingers around his, the trembling in his hands slowly coming to steady as he anchored himself against Nyx. He swallowed the mix of tears and screams that had been threatening to overtake him, sniffling a little bit before smiling back at Nyx.

“Despite all of it… I’m glad I got to see you again.”

It was the closest thing to “I love you” that Noct had ever said to him. And it was enough.


End file.
